Any Fortnite V-Bucks purchased on PlayStation will soon be available across every platform where the game is available except Nintendo Switch, developer Epic Games announced Monday. Previously, any V-Bucks you bought on a PlayStation console were locked to Sony’s platforms, but starting with the v20.40 update that will be released on Tuesday, you’ll also be able to access those V-Bucks as part of your “Shared Wallet” when you play Fortnite on Xbox, PC, Android, and cloud gaming services.
Sony has been reticent to play nicely with Epic’s cross-platform ambitions for Fortnite in the past. Cross-play wasn’t available until Sony enabled it in September 2018 despite cross-play being an option for players on Xbox and Switch ahead of that time. That hesitancy to turn on cross-play was likely because Fortnite’s cash cow is PlayStation, according to court documents released as part of Epic’s lawsuit against Apple. Between March 2018 and July 2020, PS4 generated 46.8 percent of Fortnite’s total revenues. (The second-highest platform, Xbox One, generated 27.5 percent.)
We don’t know exactly how that revenue pie breaks out right now. But given that Fortnite was the most-downloaded free to play game on the PS5 and PS4 combined in the US and EU in April, March, and February, according to Sony, it’s clear that the game is still very popular on PlayStation platforms, which likely means that a lot of people are buying V-Bucks.
Note that the upcoming change only applies to purchased V-Bucks. As before, any V-Bucks you earn through things like Fortnite’s battle passes or its Save the World mode are accessible across every platform where the game is available, including PlayStation and Switch. However, V-Bucks you buy on Microsoft or Sony’s stores won’t appear in your shared wallet until you log into Fortnite on the corresponding console platform.
